Brutal Facts

Several months ago, I wrote about the Stockdale paradox. You'll recall that the phenomenon is named for Vietnam War era admiral, Jim Stockdale, who with many of his marines spent eight years in the Hanoi Hilton, courtesy of the Viet Cong. Stockdale and fellow survivors lived to tell their story because of clear-eyed realism combined with strategic vision.

How do leaders talk blue sky at the same time they face brutal facts? I suggest that this is exactly what leaders must do. To propagate optimism without clearly spelling out the difficulty of one's situation is a recipe for organizational failure. As it turns out, we have an exemplar of Stockdale-like leadership right in our own backyard.

Forest Pines Drive Elementary School leaders Freda Cole and Diane Daly-New, owing to their successfully receiving a Teacher Leadership Grant from Wake Education Partnership, contracted with TLA to assist in addressing a problem unconscionably common to many schools--closing the white-minority achievement gap.

We have consulted with this Wake Forest school staff about a half dozen times now, sometimes planning and sometimes delivering services, as was the case this morning. Understanding through research that an effective organization is a tide that lifts all ships, we have embarked on a four-day training program, Creating High-Performance Learning Cultures, first for a teacher-leader pilot group, and later for all staff.

TLA training consultant, Dawnelle Hyland, and I met this morning to teach session two. After I took care of a few housekeeping chores, I turned things over to Dawnelle to begin delivering content. She posed a perfectly appropriate question: What has been churning around for you since we last met? The floodgates opened.

"We've been in the new building for two years. When we were holding school in the temporary modulars, we shared a sense of community. We were family. Now I'm not so sure."

"We can't tell our African-Americans to 'just get over it.' Owning up to how they got to America in the first place has got to be part of the solution. History matters."

"We have so much on us that when I see a new teacher, I just want to say: It's not that I don't care to know you; I just don't have time to know you."

"We are doing everything we are told to do. Still, every straw that comes along, we try to grab it. It seems like all we do is focus on what is not working. Where is the appreciation for what we do well?"

"We see the data and, frankly, they are depressing."

If you read dysfunctionality and discord into these teachers' comments, you are missing the point. They are, in fact, among the most committed professionals I have ever met. Rather, what is to be noticed and applauded is that the school's formal leaders created a safe space without which these brutal facts and feelings could never have been confronted.

My hat is off to Freda and Diane. And my hat is off to the courageous teachers of Forest Pines Drive  Elementary School who desire to build a high-performance learning culture where every student's success is more a result of a community of caring, competent teachers than of where the child was born or the color of his skin. Naming the problem is the beginning of solving it. I'll keep you posted as that vision becomes reality.